Former Mexican President and noted Trump dogger Vicente Fox challenged Donald Trump to a debate on Thursday.

“I’m willing to come here, to come here, to the States, if it’s for a debate,” Fox stated on WABC radio’s Election Central with Rita Cosby. “A direct personal debate with him.”
. . .
Fox said he hoped the debate would lead to Trump listening and engaging in a discussion with facts and numbers and not just be “lying and cheating to people, saying blah, blah, blah.”

As much as I dislike Trump, I wonder at times if Fox is on the Trump payroll, because while Fox may be playing to his home audience, this sort of thing helps Trump here.

Less than three years after the governor of Puerto Rico called repayment of its debt a “moral obligation,” the U.S. territory is headed for the fourth-largest government default on record.

Though markets have met the event with a shrug, that shouldn’t diminish the significance of the moment. It underlines how much the stigma about government default has faded. Investors would be wise to build this risk into their calculations when lending to governments from now on, especially since arithmetic suggests more defaults are on the way.

If you think I’m too harsh os my island of origin, allow me to point out that, when you are mentioned in the same category as Greece, you are on the wrong track.

Almagro needs at least eighteen votes to sanction Venezuela, which may prove difficult.

Caricom countries are still hopeful they could continue their very profitable Petrocaribe arrangements with Venezuela, as described in this article from Jamaica,

In essence, when the market price of oil exceeds $40 per barrel, the monetary value representing between 30 per cent and 70 per cent of each sale is loaned to the Government of Jamaica. This loan is to be repaid over a period of 25 years at the rate of 1 per cent per annum. Where the market price of oil is below $40, the monetary value representing between 5 per cent and 25 per cent of each sale is available to the Government of Jamaica as a loan for 17 years at 2 per cent. In either case, therefore, Jamaica receives a loan from Venezuela on concessionary terms.

Whether their hopes are realistic remains to be seen, but for now they are siding with Venezuela.

Venezuela is trying to buy time and calls for “dialogue”; John Kerry, consistent with the Obama administration’s never-ending streak of “smart diplomacy“, supports this call for “dialogue,” and so does Argentina’s ambassador to the OAS, Juan José Arcuri.

in practical terms this means that Malcorra will block OAS sanctions against the Venezuelan communist regime so she gets to be chief of the United Nations. Great values for a Secretary General at the UN cesspool.

And she has Macri’s backing because it will add to his administration’s “achievements.”

at the invitation of the U.S. military command for Latin America.
. . .
Welcome to the brave new world of military-to-military contact with Cuba, the Obama administration’s latest idea for engagement with that island nation.

The WaPo editorial board advises caution (emphasis added),

Normalizing military-to-military ties between the United States and Cuba, for the sake of fighting drugs or other “common threats,” would imply that civilian rule doesn’t matter so much to us anymore — that Cuba’s military is morally equivalent to its hemispheric counterparts — when, in fact, it is deeply complicit in political repression and corruption.

“Would imply that civilian rule doesn’t matter so much to us anymore”? Call me a cynic, but, when it comes to the Obama administration, that train left the station a long time ago.

despite the international media attention that the case garnered, the hacktivist group Anonymous Mexico released a video on Sunday afternoon claiming that the kidnapping and the high profile rescue as nothing more than a political maneuver by government officials looking to better position their candidates.“This is a montage aimed at fooling thousands of gullible Mexicans into thinking that Mexican authorities have the capacity to carry out operations of this magnitude,” the Anonymous character wearing a Guy Fawkes mask said in Spanish. “Mexican authorities are inept for these types of rescues, they don’t have the minimal training needed to face off against these situations. Stop fooling the people of Mexico.”